Temperatures will be on the rise over the next couple of days. The offshore ridge of high pressure will build and move onshore, pumping the high temperatures up into the upper 70s on Wednesday, and then topping out near 80 degrees on Thursday…not record highs, but not far from them. But starting Friday, the pattern changes as a series of sup-tropical low pressure systems move in from the southwest. These will cool us down some, but won’t be particularly warm systems, and any precipitation they bring will probably fall as rain up to above the major mountain passes. The unsettled pattern looks to remain until well into next week with minor breaks between waves.

Yesterday we talked about the Missoula Flood, created 13,000 years ago when Glacier Lake Missoula broke its ice dam. Flowing over eastern Washington, it flowed down and backed up against a narrowing in the Columbia River Gorge, creating a temporary lake in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. A wall of water a hundred or more feet high traveling at over 60 miles per hour scoured out much of the landscape, leaving gravel bars 400 feet high, and rolling house sized boulders for miles like they were marbles. It would have been a spectacular sight to behold.

As long as you were out of the way.